The provision of financial assistance to industry has formed a growing and important part of the economic development policies of many local authorities. However, assessments of these policies have suffered from a number of drawbacks. In particular, they have tended to focus on the employment...

The paper argues that in order to use macro-evaluation techniques to calculate the employment effect of a policy over some sub-period after policy commencement, it is necessary to determine the rate at which policy jobs are lost. Crucially, it is the rate at which jobs cease to be attributable...